I could feel the anger slip away as I pressed the needle into my skin and dragged it across my wrist. I did it a couple more times just to make sure I could really feel the pain. The new cuts pulsated on my wrist as I dabbed them with hydrogen peroxide.
I used to avoid mirrors. I didn’t want to look in a mirror and see my bumpy skin, my frizzy hair, and my ugly body. I would sit in my room and cry for hours, or I would just lie there and contemplate all the things that I needed to do or should’ve done. I would remember what my therapist said “Try to think of the things you like about yourself”. I like my eyes and I like my legs. That’s usually as far as I got; I thought I was an ugly person inside and out. I think I was depressed. I used to really struggle in social situations too. I didn’t like group settings because I didn’t know how to talk to people, and when I would say something stupid or embarrassing I would blush. Apparently social anxiety goes hand in hand with depression, as told by an advice nurse I talked to from Kaiser when I was trying to seek help.
I started to self-harm when I was fourteen, it wasn’t very frequent. When I first started it was like I was experimenting on myself; just little scratches here and there with a needle. I would clean my wrist with hydrogen-peroxide and then cover the cuts with long sleeves. The scratches were entertaining and it made me feel cool. I was fourteen and I was stupid.
When I was fifteen I started drinking, smoking, sneaking out, hanging out with older guys, and ditching school. I used to climb out the window and meet the older guys at the end of my street, so their loud mustang wouldn’t wake anyone up. We would drive to a park or an empty field and sit on a blanket and drink the bad vodka we had stolen. Getting drunk with adults and having low self-esteem was a bad combination.
I would get in trouble at school for getting bad grades and misbehaving. When I would go home I would get in trouble with my parents. The only time I felt happy was the time I spent with those older boys and being drunk. It was a vicious cycle of doing something I shouldn’t, getting in trouble, and trying to make the pain go away. I was horrible at handling my emotions; it was easier for me to feel physical pain than to feel mental pain. When I was sad I would cut myself, when I was angry I would cut myself, and when I was happy I was probably drunk. I started to use safety pins as my new self-harming ritual because I was a poetic little asshole and liked the irony in the word “safe” and then doing something that will hurt me.
That year I also decided to starve myself because I was gaining too much weight. Several times I asked to leave class because I felt like I was going to pass out and needed to go home. I wasn’t be able to feel the emptiness in my stomach after the first day of starvation. The classes after the lunch break were the ones I was absent for the most; it was like my stomach knew it was being wrongfully deprived of nutrients. I knew it was time to go home when my heart would start beating too fast and my head felt like it my float away from the rest of my body. I refused to let myself faint in class because it would draw attention to the self-inflicted wounds that littered my imperfect skin.
I hid my cuts from everyone; telling my parents was out of the question because there was no need to disappoint them any further. Telling my therapist would for sure get me locked into some mental institution and ruin my life. I told my friends that I only did it once or twice when I was feeling really bad. I wore long sleeves a lot, and when it was too hot I wore bracelets or just cut my hips instead. I remember sitting in class and flinching every time one of the bracelets scraped against a new cut. I felt that my cutting was controllable and I didn’t really have a mental illness because I wasn’t doing any real damage.
My junior year I started at a new high school. My parents said I needed a fresh start and I had to get away from my “bad” friends. The social anxiety only worsened. Some of my teachers noticed how bad my SAD (social anxiety disorder) was and didn’t make me participate. Participation was mandatory for most students; for me it was a question “Megan, would you like to read?”, I would just shake my head back and forth because saying “no” in front of a classroom of teenagers was too much for me to handle. I didn’t know how to make new friends, I thought I was weird (because I was weird), I knew I was awkward (I was very awkward), and I thought I was ugly. That was the fucked up mantra I chanted to myself; weird, awkward, and ugly. When you don’t like yourself it’s kind of hard to convince other people to like you too.
Senior year I was allowed to go back to my old high school and I was happy for a while. The self-harming started again after the short period of happiness subsided. All of my friends were blossoming. Their acne went away, they got belly button piercings, and they got their braces taken off. I felt so left behind, like I was the ugly and immature one in the group.
I realized I had a problem when I was eighteen. I read a post on Tumblr that said something along the lines of “It doesn’t matter if you cut with a safety pin, a razor, or a knife. If you’re self-harming you need help.”
Four years of my life I spent self-harming and three years I spent going in and out of starvation before conclusively deciding that there was something wrong with me. Trying to recover from years of hating yourself was not an easy task. I suppressed bad emotions for years and still have a hard time expressing my feelings to people, so instead of talking about my feelings I would work out and then feel better. I started to eat healthier instead of binge eating in front of the TV and then starving myself for three days. Slowly, I became a happier person. It took roughly a year to fully purge myself of the idea of racing to self-infliction every time my emotions felt unbearable. It became easier when I stopped drinking as frequently, exercised more often, learned healthy eating habits, and focused on my school work.
I haven’t self -harmed in almost three years. I still have social anxiety when speaking in classrooms or confrontational situations. I still don’t know how to express my feelings. Every day I’m making progress and I one day I hope I can completely heal the wound I created for myself.
